Bayonne wind turbine should be operational by end of month, officials say

The 260-foot wind turbine at the Oak Street Pumping Station in Bayonne should be operational by the end of the month, officials said last week.

The turbine was assembled in late January. At the time, officials estimated it would be operational by March, but the blades still aren’t spinning.

Doug Bauman/The Jersey JournalBayonne Municipal Utilities Authority's wind turbine at the Oak Street pumping station, seen on Sunday, May 13, 2012, is set to go online at the end of the month, city officials say.

Stephen Gallo, executive director of the Bayonne Municipal Utilities Authority, said while the turbine itself was finished in January, the connection that will enable the turbine to supply the pumping station with power has not been completed.

“You can’t have it spinning and generating electricity if there’s nowhere for the electricity to go,” Gallo said.

Gallo said the last remaining parts for activating the machine were ordered on May 7. He estimated the turbine would be operational by the end of the month.

Located at the Bayonne Municipal Utility Authority’s Oak Street Pumping station, the turbine is predicted to produce 3.3 gigawatt hours of electricity a year, enough to power 600 single-family homes for the year, officials said at the time of the turbine’s unveiling in January.

Comprised of a roughly 260-foot tower and a 1.5 megawatt center piece, the turbine will be used to help power both the city’s Oak Street and Fifth Street pumping stations.

The stations pump sewage to Jersey City, where it is in turn pumped to a sewage treatment facility in Newark.